# I am so damn tired of fantasy football **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [September 18, 2015, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713 "2015-09-18T21:50:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/21 "2015-09-22T11:33:18Z")
> [@Sir\_T-Cups](#): > > They have fantasy games for a variety of sports that cost money to put in at various amounts in order to win money in other various amounts. > > For example: They will have a football day where you pay 100 bucks to play and you pick your players for the day and it plays like free fantasy football. The kicker is that the payout is, say, 10,000 bucks but you’re playing the game with 100,000 people and only the top 3 make any money. You didn’t win? Oh man you better try again…that’ll be another 100 bucks, but c’mon! you win 10 grand! What’s another 100… Your numbers are just a tad ridiculous. 100,000 people paying $100 is 10 million. 3 places paying out, the top spot is $10,000, means at most $30,000. They’d be keeping $9,997,000 out of $10,000,000. To give an actual example, yahoo has a $10 entry tournament where the total prize pool is a guaranteed $1m (they’ll add to it if it not enough people join to supply the prize pool). It caps out at 113636 entries. Effectively yahoo takes 11.36% of the prize pool if it fills up - if it falls short, they pay to make up the difference. The top 28,495 places pay out. Not the top 3. First prize is 100k. The reality is slightly more favorable to the player than your “house keeps 99.97% of the money” example. ---
**Author:** ![Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barkis_is_Willin)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/22 "2015-09-22T13:26:38Z")
You can also enter head to head or 50/50 contests where your odds of winning really are 50/50. The smart players play most of their money in these games on a given day with some prize pool games mixed in. ---
**Author:** ![That\_Don\_Guy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/that_don_guy/32/538_2.png) [@That\_Don\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/That_Don_Guy)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/23 "2015-09-22T14:55:03Z")
What I don’t get is, fantasy sports are supposed to be limited to statistics of individual players (presumably to prevent something like “you choose a team; you get 1 point for each point your team scores, plus one team may get a pre-specified amount of points before the game begins; oh, did we forget to mention that your opponents always work for the company?”), yet pretty much every set of fantasy football rules I have ever seen require you to choose a team for defense (and occasionally kickoff/punt returning). One-day fantasy games have two things going for them; one, you don’t run the risk of being in a “keeper” league where your players are busts and you’re stuck with a perennial losing team, and two, it makes Week 17 (and 14-16, if you’re not in your league’s playoffs) watchable, especially as teams already in the playoffs tend to sit their best players (which is why a number of leagues end in Week 16 in the first place). ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/24 "2015-09-22T15:33:29Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > There are already lawmakers looking at [closing the loophole](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2015/09/14/draftkings-fanduel-could-face-first-significant-legal-challenge-after-hearing-request/) which allows daily fantasy sports to operate. Good. To be honest, i believe that all forms of gambling like this should be completely legal. I don’t have a problem with it. But if online poker is banned, then fantasy football gambling should be banned too. ---
**Author:** ![fjs1fs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9e8a1a/32.png) [@fjs1fs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fjs1fs)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/25 "2015-09-22T15:58:53Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Your numbers are just a tad ridiculous. > > 100,000 people paying $100 is 10 million. 3 places paying out, the top spot is $10,000, means at most $30,000. They’d be keeping $9,997,000 out of $10,000,000. > > To give an actual example, yahoo has a $10 entry tournament where the total prize pool is a guaranteed $1m (they’ll add to it if it not enough people join to supply the prize pool). It caps out at 113636 entries. Effectively yahoo takes 11.36% of the prize pool if it fills up - if it falls short, they pay to make up the difference. The top 28,495 places pay out. Not the top 3. First prize is 100k. > > The reality is slightly more favorable to the player than your “house keeps 99.97% of the money” example. You are probably right that the example given is ridiculous. But I didn’t see what the real “house take” or vig is in the article. I would love to see that–because that’s the bigger story re: whether it’s a ripoff, not the fact that there are so-called “sharks” out there. ---
**Author:** ![Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barkis_is_Willin)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/26 "2015-09-22T16:07:01Z")
How big were the poker sites that got shut down? Because in the month of August, DraftKings and FanDuel combined to spend over $100M on advertising. These guys are huge and they are everywhere. Imagine the fight they will put up against legislation. ---
**Author:** ![magnusblitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@magnusblitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magnusblitz)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/27 "2015-09-24T05:38:13Z")
I love fantasy football, but I hate all these ads as much as you do. The ad blitz has been just far too much (Yahoo is apparently also trying to create their own daily fantasy game, thankfully they haven’t put ads on TV yet). Matthew Berry, ESPN’s main fantasy columnist, got tons of (deserved) hatemail for “selling out” to Draftkings and incorporating them so much into his article. I also second reading the [Bloomberg article](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-10/you-aren-t-good-enough-to-win-money-playing-daily-fantasy-football) that **BigDadWolf** posted on what you need to know about Daily Fantasy sports. Basically: it’s like online poker. Sure, anyone can play and make a few bucks, but the people who win the huge prizes are the “sharks” who have their own analysis algorithms and submit hundreds or thousands of entries. It’s a job for them. The average Joe Schmoe is not gonna win any appreciable amount of money. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/28 "2015-09-24T11:46:44Z")
I wish I could find the article , but one reporter counted 19 daily fantasy ads during an NFL game last weekend. They’re plastered over train stations in Chicago , plus they cover every single mainstream sports website. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/29 "2015-09-24T13:00:17Z")
I hate fantasy football myself, but only because it gums up my google searches. Guys, [THIS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Bowl) is Fantasy fucking Football. What y’all are doing is actually Spreadsheet Football. Get it right ! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/30 "2015-09-24T13:03:19Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > I hate fantasy football myself, but only because it gums up my google searches. Guys, [THIS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Bowl) is Fantasy fucking Football. What y’all are doing is actually Spreadsheet Football. Get it right ! 🙂 And before the other Fantasy Football, it got confusing when people talked about the Bud Bowl. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/31 "2015-09-24T14:36:48Z")
> [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](#): > > You can also enter head to head or 50/50 contests where your odds of winning really are 50/50. The smart players play most of their money in these games on a given day with some prize pool games mixed in. There is no way it’s 50/50 - there is certainly a vig. And, like **fjs1fs** , I’ve yet to see a solid number on it. Does anybody have a good cite for that? ---
**Author:** ![Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barkis_is_Willin)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/32 "2015-09-24T20:24:52Z")
> [@Jas09](#): > > There is no way it’s 50/50 - there is certainly a vig. > > And, like **fjs1fs** , I’ve yet to see a solid number on it. Does anybody have a good cite for that? You’re chances of winning are absolutely 50/50, but the payout is $18 if you play a $10 contest. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/33 "2015-09-24T21:13:29Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Good. > > To be honest, i believe that all forms of gambling like this should be completely legal. I don’t have a problem with it. > > But if online poker is banned, then fantasy football gambling should be banned too. That is my congressman. From one of the few states in which online gambling and poker is legal and openly advertised. You think maybe there is someone pushing him to eliminate the competition? ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2015, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/34 "2015-09-25T17:51:23Z")
> [@Stink Fish Pot](#): > > … > I agree with the OP. In fact, I used to be a fantasy football guy in the late 1980’s , early 90’s, where the rules were painfully simple. … I used to play this same method way back in the pre-internet '80s. It was fun at the time due to the suspense of waiting for the morning paper to get the box scores from the sports section, and manually tallying up the scores. It helped that it was constrained by the very limited information in the newspaper box scores, and gave a fun sense of suspense since your results and others in the team pool were not instantly known. Today’s scripts and interwebs and spreadsheets? Bah, get off my lawn! ---
**Author:** ![russian\_heel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@russian\_heel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/russian_heel)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2015, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/35 "2015-09-27T07:52:51Z")
I got turned off after hearing weeks of DraftKings commercials saying “play for FREE week one and win $2 million” “enter code SWIFT”" so Im like why not? I sign up, enter “SWIFT” and pick my team, but then hit submit, and am told I need to deposit $30 to play. Im sorry, but I thought this was FREE??? ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2015, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/36 "2015-09-27T15:17:30Z")
> [@russian\_heel](#): > > I got turned off after hearing weeks of DraftKings commercials saying “play for FREE week one and win $2 million” “enter code SWIFT”" so Im like why not? > > I sign up, enter “SWIFT” and pick my team, but then hit submit, and am told I need to deposit $30 to play. > > Im sorry, but I thought this was FREE??? I don’t know about draft kings but the other site gives you a free entry into one high paying pool the week you deposit. ---
**Author:** ![russian\_heel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@russian\_heel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/russian_heel)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2015, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/37 "2015-09-28T05:20:15Z")
Thats the point. I don’t want to deposit. So why is Draft Kings advertising free play? ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2015, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/38 "2015-10-06T22:23:51Z")
Looks like ESPN will no longer have Draft Kings sponsored program segments , although the non stop ads will continue. > **[ESPN ends DraftKings-sponsored segments](https://money.cnn.com/2015/10/06/media/espn-draftkings-ads/index.html?sr=fb100615espn-draftkings-ads1004PMStory&linkId=17745849)** > > DraftKings ads pulled from ESPN after allegations of insider betting. Daily fantasy has made following and watching the NFL unbearable this season . Hopefully , this bubble will burst. I want to go back to whining about the pink. ---
**Author:** ![Locrian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/locrian/32/14146_2.png) [@Locrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Locrian)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2015, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/39 "2015-10-06T23:49:25Z")
I can’t STAND these freaking ads! 6 per hour! (There’s one on right now!) Yes, I play fantasy in Yahoo with friends, but that’s just for fun. And why is it called fantasy football anyway? This is Wishful Thinking Football. Fantasy football means I get Roger Staubach, Walter Payton, and the '86 Bears defense line. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barkis_is_Willin)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2015, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713/40 "2015-10-07T01:33:18Z")
ESPN pulling the sponsored segments due to scandal at DK. I read about that yesterday. At least one DK employee was using insider data, not available to the public, to play on FanDuel. And he won $350k. Not a good look for an industry already under scrutiny. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-so-damn-tired-of-fantasy-football/731713.md?page=3)